EPA Reports on Sewer Overflows

Published 8:00 pm, Monday, January 28, 2002

More than 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage pours into waterways each year from aging sewer systems designed to overflow when it rains, the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday.

Two-thirds of the 772 communities that rely on these systems don't comply with minimum federal standards, prompting "serious public health and water concerns," the EPA said in a report required by Congress under a 2000 law. Cities with newer systems are designed to treat all sewage.

Most of the raw sewage discharged by the older systems spews into rivers and streams, but some also flows into ditches and canals, oceans and lakes.

Those systems are among the earliest such facilities built in the United States, moving sewage and storm water through a single-pipe system to a public treatment plant. They are spread among 32 states, most of them in the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast.

They have "caused or contributed to beach closures, shellfish bed closures, contamination of drinking water supplies and other environmental and public health problems," the EPA said.

As many as 81 percent of the systems lack an approved long-term plan for controlling sewer overflows, the agency said. The cost of bringing all the older systems into compliance was estimated at $45 billion in 1996.

The EPA said federal loans for upgrading systems totaled $2 billion from 1989 to 2000, only about 5 percent of what was needed to bring them into compliance. Congress also has appropriated more than $600 million in grants for 32 communities in the past decade.

Congress requires a follow-up EPA report by December 2003.

Critics said the report shows there has been little progress made since lawmakers first complained about raw sewage floating in rivers more than three decades ago.

"This report shows that it's time to stop the hand-holding and hand-wringing, and put the resources into implementing and enforcing this program," said Nancy Stoner, director of the clean water project for Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group.

The EPA cited in its report the NRDC's findings in 2000 that sewage spills and overflows accounted for 2,230 beach closings and advisories that year. The most common ailments from swimming in water containing raw sewage are vomiting and diarrhea.

Starting in April 1994, the EPA adopted a policy requiring communities to meet nine minimum standards for reducing combined sewer overflows. Those standards were supposed to be met by Jan. 1, 1997.